Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Last week, eleven Mennonites on their way to a wedding in Iowa were killed when a tractor-trailer crossed over the median and crashed into their van on I-65 in Munfordville, KY. Two children survived the crash.

Yesterday, funerals were held in Cumberland County for nine of the victims and there was an unprecedented outpouring of support from the public - thousands of citizens descended on the tiny town of Marrowbone to honor the Esh family in their time of tremendous loss. At least 4000 people attended the services, and some drove more than 1000 miles to get there.

Kenneth Laymon, the truck driver killed in the crash, will be laid to rest Wednesday morning in his home state of Alabama. Authorities, who still dont know why Laymon's truck crossed the median into opposing traffic, are still analyzing the results of the autopsy to determine if drugs or alcohol played a part.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Many families with loved ones buried at Frankfort Cemetery were recently horrified to find that trinkets, mementos, sentimental items, crosses, religious icons, and plastic flowers have all been removed and tossed in a giant junk heap.

Superintendent Coleman Kincaid is the man responsible for this travesty, and he makes no apologies about what he's done.

"There are so many ways that objects near and around graves make it hard for us to do the maintenance that this cemetery requires. We have 20,000 graves here." Kincaid said to the State-Journal. "The rules have always been here. It’s just in the past they were loosely observed and I am the one now charged with enforcing them."

However, there are glaring problems with Kincaid's "rules are rules" excuse. For one, real flowers are permitted while plastic ones are not, so it doesn't make sense to say that it's just about the maintenance men having difficulty mowing and weed-eating. It's just as hard to mow around a real flower than a plastic one.

Let's just be honest here, Mr. Kincaid, and say what this is really about: aesthetics. Even in death, it seems, snooty and nosey people try to tell tackier people what they can't do in their own yard.

Some people think decorated graves are tacky, while others (like me) say that people who paid a fortune for an exorbitantly price-gouged funeral, headstone and cemetery plot should be able to leave trinkets at that grave without some Mrs. Drysdale-voiced society lady complaining about how gauche it is.

I don't know whether Cemetery Board Member Dorothy Wilson talks like Mrs. Drysdale, but it would be appropriate. From the State-Journal:

“I think Coleman and the men who work here have done a nice job and definitely think it looks better,” Wilson said.

She too has received complaints, and many who called were very angry, she said.

“We (the board) began discussing the condition of the cemetery two or three years ago and the fact that there was a policy and it is on every contract, but had not been enforced,” said Wilson, the board member.

“When Coleman came on as superintendent last summer, we explained to him that the cemetery needed to be cleaned up.”

Although it may be true that stipulations about trinkets on graves are indeed buried deep in the fine print of the cemetery's contract (and who reads such contracts closely when they're wracked with grief for a loved one?), Wilson has, by her own admission, acknowledged that the policy had not been enforced. This means that a prospective customer, looking around and seeing graves festooned with bric-a-brac, naturally and logically would assume such things were permitted - because, in fact, they were.

The Frankfort Cemetery Board - consisting of seven people selected every five years - needs to overcome their obsession with aesthetically "cleaning up" other people's graves. The State-Journal notes that many people are furious with the Board, and say those who sit on the board are insensitive to their grief.

But that's not the only problem on their hands.

In someone's zeal to "clean up" the place, actual grave markers have been removed from the baby section of the cemetery. From the State-Journal again:

Pat Woods, of Frankfort, is among those upset by the policy.

“They even removed things that were sitting on tombstones and just threw them in a pile,” Woods said. “What respect have they shown for us or our loved ones?”

Woods is especially distraught that markers are gone in a section many refer to as the baby cemetery. “When my brother and sister died in the 40s, my parents could not afford tombstones,” Woods said. “I recently purchased new markers and replaced the old ones. They are gone.” A wooden cross that marked one child’s grave is no longer there, she added.

Monday, March 29, 2010

I've got an article on Louisville Mojo now about the mysterious "Hutaree", a paramilitary religious-apocalyptic cult recently busted by the FBI in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.

With Ohio and Indiana being frighteningly close to home, and with reports that Hutaree was working hard on expanding its reach into all 50 states, the influence of the Hutaree cult and its sympathizers on Kentucky will bear closer investigation in the days and weeks to come.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

As reported on Louisville Mojo, a judge has ordered Frank Faris to give away this great old Victorian mansion to anyone who wants to take it off his hands, since he has himself been unable or unwilling to make court-mandated renovations to the historic home.

Faris purchased the property for $100,000 years ago with the intent to demolish it, but the city declared it a historic building before he got around to that. Now he's forbidden to tear it down and saddled with the cost of maintaining it to code.

So yeah, I suppose there is a catch, and that was it. Anyone who takes the free building will find themselves with the same expensive task as Faris: trying to bring this crumbling, near-collapse edifice back to life.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Hello there! I was googling "weird bird vortex" and your blogspot popped up and while I didn't investigate all the archives, I did think maybe you would have heard something about it.

About twelve years ago I lived in Bowling Green, KY and I was walking toward the square and I espied what appeared to be hundreds of starlings swirling in a cyclone pattern over the parking lot of the community services building. I asked a friend about it and he said that it happens every year on a certain date and is something akin to the egg-standing-on-end phenomena.

Have you ever heard of this and if so could you give me your knowledge on the subject? Much appreciated.

Marie

Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything about the connection of starlings to the balanced egg phenomena, although it sounds fascinating! Any other readers know anything about this?

I do remember taking some pictures in Georgetown, KY last year of a huge murmuration of starlings, who were swirling for over an hour in a peculiar sort of frenzied cyclonic cloud, much in the same way as in this video but more consistently figure-8-shaped. Going back through the files now to retrieve them.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

There have been many reported sightings of so-called "black panthers" in Kentucky (and other states as well) despite the fact that they aren't supposed to be here. "Panther" is a generic term that refers to any number of large black cats in general, and if there really are black ones in our state, they are most likely rare melanistic colour mutation of any number of species.

"There are no authenticated cases of truly melanistic cougars (pumas). Melanistic cougars have never been photographed or shot in the wild and none has ever been bred. There is wide consensus among breeders and biologists that the animal does not exist."

However, it then immediately goes on to state:

"Black cougars have been reported in Kentucky and in the Carolinas."

The photo above is one such example.

On the other hand, black Bobcats, while also rare, are acknowledged to exist, and although they technically do not qualify as panthers, I don't think the average person who spots one is going to care about the finer distinctions.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Troy Noel Lear, the crossdressing bankrobber we previously reported on here and here, has been indicted by a grand jury in Richmond. According to the Associated Press:

Indictments from the Madison County grand jury Wednesday charge 40-year-old Troy Noel Lear of Brodhead with two counts of first-degree robbery for holdups at a Berea bank and a hotel in Richmond. Investigators told The Richmond Register that the robber in the bank heist showed a gun and an electronic stun device was the threat in the hotel robbery.

It's not known whether Lear's crossdressing is an Ed Wood-esque habit of his own, or merely intended as a clever disguise, but the AP report also seems to contain a subtle dig, as if to say "Sorry, Mary, but you just aren't passable":

While the robber dressed as a female, police said witnesses knew he was a man.

No mention was made in the WLKY article of a Danville incident in which a robbery was committed by a crossdressing man, and in which Lear had also been suspected. It's also unclear whether this Troy Lear is the same Troy Lear who figured in this puzzling case.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Bowling Green Daily News recently ran a feature story about PIRK (Paranormal Investigators and Researchers of Kentucky), a ghost-hunter organization led by the father-daughter team of Jeff and Kayla Yeckering, plus Kayla's fiance Joey McGee.

From the article:

“I’ve always had an interest in the paranormal,” said Kayla Yeckering, a freshman at Western Kentucky University interested in nursing and psychology. “I have had many experiences, and I’m always looking for answers.” Her search for answers is shared by fellow investigator and fiance Joey McGee, the group’s equipment specialist...

Just to help things along, PIRK brings back-up equipment such as voice recorders, cameras, electro-magnetic field detectors, ambient thermometers and infrared lights. “It’s just common equipment you can get at Walmart,” McGee said.

(Unfortunately, the group embraces the phony-baloney internet hoax meme of Orbs.)

Monday, March 15, 2010

This video is of what I think is a UFO spotted in Florence Ky on Mt. Zion Road. This was about 11:00 PM at night and very cold 19 degrees outside. Several people saw this and you had to look straight up to see it. In the video, it is very dark, but what you are looking for is 3 square lights about the center of the screen. The object in the video stayed stationary, the movement is from me holding the camera." (Author: battlebuggy @ youtube)

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Most serious students of Fortean phenomena and the paranormal are aware of what has become known as the "Fayette Factor".

In the late 1970s, when home computerization first started researchers on the road to properly collating and sharing their own personal paranormal case files, a glaring coincidence became apparent to author William Grimstad. It seemed that an uncanny number of the incidents involved the word/name Fayette, Lafayette, or variations thereof.

In the Spring 1978 issue of Fortean Times magazine, Grimstad wrote an essay on his findings, entitled "Fateful Fayette". Since then, the subject has been expanded upon and expounded upon by many other researchers, most notably by author Loren Coleman.

It appears that, for those who believe such things possible, there is a definite mythic resonance and power around the name Lafayette and its abbreviated version, Fayette.

Some, like the aforementioned Coleman, suggest a connection to Freemasonry and the French Marquis de Lafayette:

The cities, towns, and counties across the United States, which are the Fortean hotspots linked to the Fayette Factor, are tied to the renamed Masonic lodges and affiliated sites that the Marquis de Lafayette visited on his grand tour of the country in 1824-1825. His visits were highly ritualized happenings, in which he is involved with laying many cornerstones. The locations where he is taken to visit are a virtual roadmap of the "special places" in this land. For example, in 1825, The Marquis de Lafayette, on board the ship (please note!) "Enterprise," visited the Cahokia mounds, and the significant Bloody Island, which then was so large that half of the Mississippi flowed east of it. (Intriguingly, Lafayette returned to France in 1825, on the day after his birthday, demonstrating a keen eye on the calendar and a desire to celebrate September 6th in America.)

Others believe the harmonic significance and coincidence-inducing energy around the name Lafayette must go back even further, to something older, prehistoric; antediluvian, even. Such patterns of resonance, reverberating in the woof and warp of the timespace continuum, like Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic fields, if they exist (and I have seen convincing evidence that they do) may predate man entirely.

Since one of Kentucky's most prominent counties is Fayette County, it's not surprising that the Lexington Herald-Leader eventually got hip to the concept. On March 14, 2004, that paper had a feature article about the events of the previous day (which is March 13, same day as today, in case you haven't noticed, and no, I did not plan it thus):

It was already notable for being a Friday the 13th. But some saw more in the Adams Lane shootings that day. Two days before the shootings, Ufoinfo.com, a Web site devoted to the paranormal, republished a tract about "the Fayette factor"...

Should we be surprised in a year in which a sniper haunts the Fayette County, Ohio interstate, or Lafayette, Louisiana's St. Paul School Social Sciences Fair had juniors Chris Brown and Robert Egnatchik placing first in anthropology with "Bigfoot" that the whole Fayette Factor would be gettingconscious press attention?

Subscribers to the Marquis theory also find significance in the name "LaGrange", and rightly so: Kentucky's own city of La Grange is named for Chateau de LaGrange, which was the French home of the Marquis de Lafayette. And our La Grange does have a powerful mojo about it, perhaps in part because of the maximum security prisons there. And it is true that the place is the burial site of the poet laureate of Freemasonry. (Then again, at this late date in history, in any given town, throw a rock and you'll probably hit something Freemason-related.)

Fayette County is well known as a paranormal hot spot, with haunted sites galore and a compelling folklore about a series of enormous underground caverns. Reportedly, these subterranean chambers once held the remains of a mysterious civilization that long predated the Native American tribes that occupied America when the pilgrims showed up. Fayette County is also home to the haunted Hunt-Morgan House, and it's the place where I had my Men In Black experience.

What does it all mean? I'm pondering.

The image above is the Marquis de Lafayette, at his memorial site at Olomouc.

Friday, March 12, 2010

If you don't look closely you may mistake it for a water meter lid or something, but this cover plate for a time capsule is hidden in plain sight downtown at the corner of 7th and Main.

I think it's interesting that we as a society now hold on to our past much more than ever- especially thanks to pop culture's ability to continue reverberating long after its day, and also because of the internet's inherent archiving of everything. Because of this, I wonder if the culture shock will be all that great when people in 2075 finally open this vault. I predict that much of the contents will still be familiar and well-known to the people of the future. By contrast, the gulf between 1875 and 1975 seemed vast and relatively unfathomable in 1975.

Why? Well, because it's art, man. Says so here. According to the artist's statement of creator Monica Mahoney, the gluing of the glass globs was done to make the car "resemble the interior of a pomegranate".

Alrighty then.

I've never seen the car actually being driven, but apparently you can rent the thing to have yourself chauffeured around in postmodern style - contact bgoodman@21chotel.com for availability and rates.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The fossil fuel known as coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide. And, as it just so happens, Kentucky's chock-full of the stuff. It's sprinkled throughout the state but is especially pocketed in two major deposit areas that take up half of Kentucky.

But what is coal?

According to Wikipedia, "Coal begins as layers of plant matter accumulated at the bottom of a body of water. For the process to continue the plant matter must be protected from biodegradation and oxidization, usually by mud or acidic water. The wide shallow seas of the Carboniferous period provided such conditions."

Everything we do today, around the world, depends on the continued mining of this dessicated metamorphosized prehistoric plant material from the days of the proto-dinosaurs.

But coal is essentially carbon, which is in itself the basic building block of all life on Earth. Although it's theoretically possible that there could be other forms of life out there in the Universe, such as silicon-based life, it's purely within the realm of speculation. For our purposes here on Earth, everything is based on carbon.

In very ancient times, mankind's world was revolutionized by the simple discovery that carbon could give us Carbon Black, a material derived by charring organic materials such as wood or bone, for the purposes of ink for writing and pigment for art. From this man progressed from the spoken word to the written word, and language and communication took a quantum leap into becoming something tangible, something you could save and have and hold and touch. Veritably, "the word made flesh".

Those who find significance in the number 666 as being representational of evil and Satanic forces might then find it troubling to know that the atom of elemental carbon is comprised of 6 electrons, 6 protons, and 6 neutrons. As they say, the Devil is in the details.

And since the number 666 is supposed to be connected to a future "Mark of the Beast" that is placed on every person's body, it's also interesting to note that most black tattoo inks use carbon black ("the word made flesh" again). Could the Mark of the Beast be, literally, a tattoo that inserts carbon into your skin cells?

(Short answer: yep. Take a look at U.S. Patent 5,878,155, issued to Houston inventor Thomas W. Heeter, described as a "Method for verifying human identity during electronic sale transactions" — by tattooing a bar code on an individual.)

And what does this Satanic interpretation of coal mean when symbolically applied to the notion of Santa Claus who, like Krampus before him, places coal in the stockings of "bad" children?

Meanwhile, some researchers in China have discovered that coal specifically from the Permian-Triassic mass extinction is especially toxic and harmful to humans today. As the American Chemical Society press release puts it: "The volcanic eruptions thought responsible for Earth’s largest mass extinction which killed more than 70 percent of plants and animals 250 million years ago is still taking lives today." Interestingly, part of what is making the extinction-coal-dust so harmful is the high level of silicon.

Coal dust, being essenially carbon, is forever lodged in not just the lungs but many other internal organs of many Kentuckians. It also has a tendency to remain trapped in the skin and other tissues. Just as I wonder about the ubiquitous corn molecules that are permeating all human tissues, I also wonder about the long-term consequences for us as a species having greater and greater amount of coal being permanent parts of our own personal ecosystems. It isn't just for coal miners anymore.

The Algonquins tell us that all substances and all things have a separate spirit, an entity that represents that thing and pervades it, called a Manitou. If so, the Manitou of carbon, the Manitou of coal, and even the Manitous of the prehistoric plants who once were these atoms are inside us, touching us, within us all even as we speak.

And what is their intent for us?

If there is an answer that we have chance of gleaning, it probably lies deep underground, in the coal's natural habitat, where dust-drenched Kentuckians endure the sulphurous reek of the hellish subterranean mines.

Smith was aboard a luxury cruise liner called the Dreamward (since renamed the Norwegian Dream) on a trip to Bermuda - which in itself comprises one of the points of the triangle - and he began feeling anxious and ill on the journey. He wore a scopolamine patch behind each ear to help ward off seasickness and nausea. It was on the return trip that he abruptly died without warning.

The night of Aug. 9, during a cocktail party aboard the Dreamward, Smith was his normal self. Smiling. Laughing. Animated in conversation as he autographed basketballs for about 100 vacationers. As always, he was eager to join his wife, Monica, their 9-year-old daughter, Sydney, and 5-year-old son, Nolan. At 8:30 Monica Smith left the observatory lounge with her children and went downstairs to take their seats for the farewell dinner.

Five minutes later, Smith was seated upstairs in the lounge, chatting with several people. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, opened and then closed. His head moved back. "C'mon Derek, quit messin' around," someone said. Smith's body slumped to the right. Another passenger ran over, found a very faint pulse and started administering CPR. Ship medical personnel rushed in and spent the better part of a half hour trying to resuscitate him.

"That's it", said one of the medics. It was 9:10. "There's nothing more we can do."

Despite their efforts to jump-start Smith's heart, it never produced more than five beats in succession.

Interestingly, another death cited as a possible Bermuda Triangle case is that of a man named Derrick Smith, who vanished off the coast of Savannah in 2001.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

The story of Maysville's Bermuda Triangle began around 1992 when a barge sank near the Kentucky shoreline in West Maysville Kentucky. A subsequent salvage operation in 1994 tried to raise the sunken barge with two Navy minesweepers. The minesweepers were the next victim as they became stuck in the mud. A towboat trying to free the minesweepers also fell victim when damage to its engines rendered it crippled. Next came a salvage barge named The Hercules. The Maysville Bermuda Triangle made short work of it as well. While hoisting the original barge, the crane aboard The Hercules broke as the barge reached the surface, and down it sank again. Then The Hercules itself sank, coming to rest on top of the barge it was supposed to save. Eventually the minesweepers and the towboat sank as well. The entire salvage operation nick-named John Beatty's Navy, after its owner, fell victim to what an Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson would later call, "The Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River".

Like much of Wikipedia, the section of text is unsourced. In fact, it may not remain on the article long since it's already been tagged as needing a citation and it's part of a trivia section that will likely get deleted. (Also in that same trivia section: "Seen from above at night, the streetlights of the downtown area form the outline of the Liberty Bell, crack included". Hmmmm. Now that I gotta see.)

I'm still researching this "Maysville Bermuda Triangle" matter, but nothing surprises me about the Ohio River. Time and time again, it's proven to be a very strange and, I daresay, cursed place.

Friday, March 5, 2010

COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) - Patients of a northern Kentucky psychiatrist jailed on a charge he stabbed a woman with a sword have tried to keep appointments with him in jail. Kenton County jail Chief Deputy Scott Colvin said deputies have had to turn away several patients of Douglas Rank, charged last month with first-degree assault in an attack on 32-year-old woman.

Colvin told the Kentucky Enquirer that some patients have asked if they could drop off Rank's prescription pad at the jail so he could write their prescriptions.

Colvin said the requests have been denied, as prisoners are not allowed to practice their trade in jail.

At a hearing Tuesday, witnesses said the psychiatrist towered over his bloodied patient with a sword in both hands before he was distracted and had the weapon wrestled away from him.

According to the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, Rank’s license is active this week, but is it set to expire on Sunday.

Rank, who is also board certified in internal medicine, had his license to practice medicine restricted by the board in 2001 it found that after he prescribed “high doses of narcotic prescriptions” to one patient while practicing in Lexington.

The Board of Medical Licensure found that Rank had given the patient 57 prescriptions over 14 months. Rank agreed to no longer treat the patient.

Rank also faced disciplinary action from the board in 2000 after he admitted he had sexual intercourse with another patient.

Author Thomas L. Freese (any relation to Claude H. Freese, I wonder?) is an author and storyteller whose work includes over 130 articles for magazines and newspapers such as Lexington's Chevy Chaser. His other books include Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, KY, Fog Swirler and 11 Other Ghost Stories, and Strange and Wonderful Things.

I know I've met Mr. Freese but I can't remember where. Some of my synapses suggest it was at the St. James Art Fair but other voices in my noggin say it may have been at a Farmer's Market in Shelbyville. My fractal memory's too fractal to pull it up right now, but I do recall he was a really sincere and nice guy.

Here's the Barnes & Noble synopsis about his new book:

Ghosts, Spirits and Angels, presenting compelling true tales and eye-witness accounts from over 75 individuals with stories set in Kentucky, plus a dozen other states and two countries! This unique panorama of paranormal and spiritual incidences is laid out by ordinary folks who happen to live in haunted houses, come up to the edge of spiritual realities and are blest to encounter angels.

Ghosts, Spirits and Angels makes a dramatic statement in spreading the net wider than just ghostly tales to bring in true accounts of the simply amazing. Lives are forever changed by these encounters in such stories as a dead friend saving a would-be author from throwing away her first book manuscript, a Kentucky girl who grows up with a witch who married into their family, angel wings that caught a skier who fell off a cliff, and the arrival of a cash-filled envelope addressed by someone's deceased mother postmarked after her death. There are also tales of shadow people from very haunted Waverly Hills TB Sanatorium, an account of Tennessee's Bell Witch, a humorous tale of a family's ghost cat, and the touching story of an angelic emergency responder, to name a few.

Joe Conason has a scathing indictment of Jim Bunning's "charitable" foundation in Salon. Read it here, and then check out my own column on Louisville Mojo for more nuggets of interest regarding the Senator's peculiar foundation that seems to exist only for the purpose of diverting charity money back to himself.